forms terse, compact, and beautiful, which enable us to retain them for ever. For instance, how many persons must have dimly thought, and vaguely said, before Pope wrote his famous couplet, that after all experience showed that the form of any government had little to do with the happiness of those subject to it, good governors with a bad system being better than bad governors with a good system! From these and a hundred other such conceptions the honey is sucked, the pith extracted, the sum and substance turned into a golden sentence for all time, in the lines: L. 308. For forms of government let fools contest; Take upon content=Take upon trust. L. 315. But true expression : This admirable triplet seems to attain to the perfection of didactic verse. L. 323. Several=distinct, separate; see 1. 66 and note. L. 324. Some by old words: So Spenser wrote his Pastoral Eclogues in a diction purposely archaic, and Thomson did something of the same kind in his Castle of Indolence. L. 328. Fungoso: See Ben Jonson's Every Man out of his Humour. P. Fungoso is a poor student who follows the fashion afar off like a spy,' endeavouring to ape the dress and manners of the courtier Fastidious Brisk, but with little success. L. 346. Their feeble aid do join: Even so good a poem as Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse admitted these wretched expletives; as Theocritus does now to us belong : but the Essay on Criticism banished them effectually from English poetry. And yet Pope himself, in the first edition, frequently transgressed his own rule. See the instances in the list of Variants, p. 195, at lines 75, 92, 219, 490, &c. He probably saw the inconsistency soon after the first publication of the Essay in 1711; for in the edition of 1717 all these faults are corrected. L. 348. While they ring round: It has been justly observed that there is a confusion in this paragraph between bad critics and bad poets; the same persons who figure in the former character at its beginning, gradually assume the latter character before it is ended. L. 356. A needless Alexandrine: An Alexandrine is a line of twelve syllables; rhyming Alexandrines are the standard metre of French tragedy. The name is derived from a popular French romance of the twelfth century written in this metre, the Alexandreis, or story of Alexander the Great. The last line of Pope's own Messiah is as good an instance of a 'needless Alexandrine' as can be given. See Guest's English Rhythms, ii. 255. L. 361. Denham-Waller: Royalist poets, of whom the former died in 1668, the latter survived to the reign of James II. In his Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dryden says that the France of that day could produce 'nothing so even, sweet, and flowing as Mr. Waller; nothing so majestic, so correct, as Sir John Denham.' L. 367. And the smooth stream: The smoothness of this line is merely in the words, not in the sounds, which are heavy and unpleasing. L. 372. Camilla: This heroine is introduced in the seventh Æneid as an important member of the confederacy formed to resist the Trojan invaders. Virgil's lines represent, by their actual ringing lightness, the graceful, springy movement of the martial fair one, far better than Pope's. They are Illa vel intactæ segetis per summa volaret L. 373. This line is an instance of an Alexandrine. L. 374. Timotheus: See 'Alexander's Feast, or the Power of Music; an Ode by Mr. Dryden.' L. 379. And tears begin to flow : Quoted from Dryden's Ode : And now and then a sigh he stole, And tears began to flow. L. 381. The world's victor: Pope employed this phrase again of Cæsar in the Prologue to Addison's tragedy of Cato:— The triumph ceased; tears gushed from every eye; Unfortunately for Dryden's accuracy, the musician Timotheus died two years before Alexander the Great was born! L. 391. For fools admire. Pope perhaps alludes here to Horace's maxim, that the secret of happiness is 'nil admirari'; although the philosophic equanimity spoken of in the one case is rather concerned with the moral order of things, in the other with the intellectual. L. 403. Enlights: An improper word for enlightens. Warton. L. 415. Joins Allies himself. L. 420. But let a lord: So Horace's sycophantic poet applauds the verses of his high-born and wealthy patron :— clamabit enim, Pulchre! bene ! recte! Pallescet super his; etiam stillabit amicis. Ex oculis rorem; saliet, tundet pede terram. Ars Poet. 428. L. 440. Once school-divines. The line of thought seems to be this. There are changing fashions in wit, just as there have been contending schools in religion. Once scholastic divinity was all the rage in England; the Realists, followers of Duns Scotus, argued interminably with the Nominalists who adhered to St. Thomas Aquinas. If the same faith has been so differently understood, what wonder if that which seems wit to one generation makes a very different impression on another? He who paints current follies gains laughter and applause; but after a few years the jokes seem frigid, and the wit forced. L. 445. Duck-lane: A place where old and second-hand books were sold formerly, near Smithfield. P. L. 459. Parsons, critics, beaux: Jeremy Collier, a nonjuring divine, attacked Dryden's plays for their licentiousness; the Rev. Luke Milbourn made a fierce attack on his translation of Virgil. As for critics,' Buckingham, aided by Sprat and Butler, heaped ridicule on his heroic plays, and Sir Richard Blackmore attacked him as an irreverent and unorthodox wit. Of the beaux, Buckingham assailed him as we have seen, and Rochester hired bravos to waylay and beat him. L. 465. Zoilus: This Philistine among critics probably lived in the fourth century before Christ. He wrote a work in nine books 'Against Homer's Poetry,' and another in which he attacked Plato. None of his works have come down to us. The particular ground on which he censured Homer is said to have been the poet's introduction of fabulous and mythical matter into his epic poems. L. 470. When first that sun: This noble simile represents very justly the manner in which the envious depreciation of inferior minds tends in the end to set in a still clearer light the greatness of the genius which they attack. The Dunciad,-perhaps the Imitations of Horace, -would never have been written but for the contradictions of cavillers, L. 474. Be thou the first: An instructive commentary on these lines is supplied by Dr. Johnson's celebrated letter to Lord Chesterfield. That nobleman, to whom Johnson, in the days when he was unknown, struggling, and forlorn, had vainly applied for assistance, wrote two papers in a magazine after the appearance of the Dictionary, recommending the work warmly to the notice of the public. Johnson then wrote to him, and said, amongst other things: 'Is not a patron, my Lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.' (Life, by Boswell, I. 198.) L. 483. And such as Chaucer is: It is noteworthy that, although nearly a hundred and seventy years have gone by, this prediction is less true now than when it was made. In the times of Dryden and Pope people could not be induced to read Chaucer unless his language were modernized; and for this reason Dryden modernized the Knight's Tale, and other Canterbury Tales, among his Fables. But now not only is Dryden himself as readable to us as to his own contemporaries, but such are the love and reverence with which Chaucer and the England of our forefathers are regarded, that to modernize any work of Chaucer now would be regarded as the height of presumption and a mere waste of labour. On this matter of changing language, I am indebted to Mr. Hales for the following apposite quotation from Waller's poem, Of English Verse:— Poets that lasting marble seek We write in sand; our language grows, And like the tide our work o'erflows, Chaucer his sense can only boast, The glory of his numbers lost Years have defaced his matchless strain, And yet he did not sing in vain. L. 492. The treacherous colours: This reads as if it had been written of the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, many of which, owing to his fondness for making experiments in colours, exhibit faces and hands of a ghastly pallor, from which the original tints have entirely vanished. L. 507. By knaves undone: By which the poet would insinuate, a common but shameful truth, That men in power, if they got into it by illiberal arts, generally left Wit and Science to starve. W. L. 521. Sacred lust of praise: 'Sacred,' by an imitation of the Latin use of the word, means here accursed, as in Virgil's 'Auri sacra fames.' L. 534. In the fat age : The age of Charles II. L. 538. Jilts ruled the state: Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland, had great political influence in this reign; and Louise de Querouaille, created Duchess of Portsmouth, was said to have had a large share in persuading Charles to sign the Treaty of Dover. L. 540. A courtier's play: Plays were written by Sir Robert Howard, Edward Howard his brother, the Duke of Buckingham, the Duchess of Newcastle, and other notabilities of Charles II.'s court. L. 541. And not a mask : Alluding to the custom in that age of ladies going in masks to the play. Bowles (quoted by Ward). L. 544. A foreign reign : The reign of William III. The influence of Pope's Catholic education is apparent in expressions such as this. In 'unbelieving priests' there is probably a stroke, and a very unjust one, at Bishop Burnet; and when it is said that they 'taught more pleasant methods of salvation,' we are reminded of a passage in Dryden's Hind and Panther (Book III.) about the elegant comfort of the life of Anglican clergymen compared with the ancient austerity : And The world was fallen into an easier way; Religion frights us with a mien severe. And leave the luggage of good works behind. L. 545. Socinus: Lælius Socinus and his nephew Faustus, natives of Sienna in Italy, born, the one in 1525, the other in 1539, |